THE ILX ALL-TIME SPECULATIVE FICTION POLL RESULTS THREAD & DISCUSSION

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13 Jorge Luis Borges - Ficciones
138 points/10 votes/0 #1 votes

I just finished Borges' Ficciones, which may be the best thing I've ever read.

― Z S, Sunday, June 24, 2007 8:29 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark

It is also possible to argue that Borges’s work was indeed political, that he himself was a political activist all his life, that his lack of interest as an artist in the world outside the book arose from his and his mother’s dislike of the dominant elements in Argentine society, that his style and his system developed not despite Argentine society but because of it.

― Colm Tóibín, Sunday, May 11, 2006 3:17 AM (4 years ago) Bookmark

^^ kinda on some "if you dudez were going 2 vote 4 it shouldve been #1" tip here personally btw

also: Z S otm

Borges is like a genre unto himself

is Calvino gonna place too now lol

OK well Cosmicomics better be on here then (showing my allegiances)

ha xpost

Love Borges and Calvino should imo!

Calvino got my #1 vote.

:D

yesss

alright gonna get the next one out of the way, lol...

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12 Philip K. Dick - The Man in the High Castle
161 points/11 votes/0 #1 votes

Where is the love for The Man In The High Castle? I thought this was by far his best. Though love Ubik and Palmer Eldritch too, think those are the three to go for. I found Valis beyond dullsville.

― Meg Busset, Thursday, January 17, 2008 3:58 AM (3 years ago) Bookmark

I see Man in the High Castle as of a piece with Dick's other "alternate reality/timestream" novels and stories, of which there are many. But the thing that really differentiates it is the I Ching device, which clearly compounded Dick's already rather half-assed approach to plot construction and narrative pacing... I like it okay, but it doesn't contain many ideas I feel compelled to return to (unlike other books of his which have similar structural problems but also more challenging concepts). Why it won the Hugo is also kind of a mystery to me...

― Shakey Mo Collier, Monday, February 26, 2007 5:44 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark

hahaha

lol

^ & xpost
What they said.

Vote-splitting keeps Dick out of the top 10, unless Now Wait For Last Year or something equally left-field sneaks in.

galactic pot healer at #1

Clears the way for E.E. "Doc" Smith I guess

galactic pot healer at #1

I lol'd

I'm guessing there weren't a ton of write-ins for A Clockwork Orange as I would have expected to see it by now.

goddamn sausage party

I'd laugh if all of the Gibson books ended up in the top 10

― fat fat fat fat Usher (DJP), Wednesday, April 6, 2011 1:52 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark

If this happens Jon Lewis is off the web because of you

(I still think the top 3 is going to be some permutation of Watership Down, Hitchhiker's Guide and LOTR)

only a half-dozen or so people's #1 votes have placed so far, so I expect there's gonna be some kind of consensus/canonical stuff to come. (Tiptree better be in there you bastards!)

I'm not sure a single Dick novel (outside of Scanner) would make my top 20 sci-fi novels, but he would have a dozen in my top 100 so I'm sort of pleased by this.

11 James Smith - The Mace Windu Chronicles
172 points/13 votes/5 #1 votes

Dan don't forget about harry potter!

goddamn sausage party

not sure what you were expecting - more Anne McCaffrey votes? list is heavily (albeit not ALL) male yeah, but the genre is really male-dominated too

I voted for 3 Dick novels and I kind of feel bad about it now

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11 J.G. Ballard - The Complete Stories of J.G. Ballard
162 points/11 votes/3 #1 votes

I agree the short stories are probably better than many of the novels. I wouldn't know which one of those to vote for, there are too many astounding ones.

― Milton Parker, Monday, March 9, 2009 4:40 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark

[W]orking my way through The Collected Stories of JG Ballard. Reading his early stories now, they're more conventional/scientific sci-fi than you might expect, with intricate twists & surprise endings but you can see the Ballardian themes/obsessions start to emerge/evolve. what sets him apart from genre is his diamond-brilliant prose. and his writing is why I vastly prefer Ballard to PK Dick (who I respect but find physically hard to read). never gonna finish 1000+ pages by the time this book is due back at the library, even with renewals, but finishing it will be worth whatever fines are incurred.

― the mighty the mighty BOHANNON (m coleman), Tuesday, February 9, 2010 5:23 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark

Dan don't forget about harry potter!

oh, right

bleah

oh shit dogs you know what we haven't seen yet

rhymes with goon

the ballard collection is technically the most contemporary title itl

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not sure what you were expecting - more Anne McCaffrey votes?

it was a "too much Dick" pun

I must say - Ballard's recycling of the "charismatic madman running a cult in some post-apocalyptic scenario" plot has always made me kind of underrate him. every time I run into it (Crash, Hello America, a bunch of short stories) I'm always like "wtf THIS again?"

Ballard's novels are pretty unnecessary if you've read all the short stories imo, he covers all the same ground and you don't notice the non-existent characterisation so much.

I've always preferred Ballard's re-use of themes over Moorcock's Eternal Champion.

eh, I appreciate that Moorcock at least constructs a convincing excuse for recycling characters/plots

Maitland looked across the drained lagoon at dusk. His semen traced the coutours of Elizabeth's thigh etc etc etc

I like that we've moved from Dick to Moorcock

LOOOL

if only there was a sci-fi fantasy writer named sausage

Anus Anus Attanasio

There must be a Wang.

George R. R. Sausage

I want to complain about everything but I kind of love this thread

Man, I've only ever read one PKD novel (The Man in the High Castle fwiw) and I didn't think too much of it, so these results are kinda wtf to me

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10 Frank Herbert - Dune
179 points/14 votes/0 #1 votes

Dune the first one = Classic.

Probably one of my top 5 SF novels - loved how the setting was based around this hard environmental science (which in retrospect doesn't make sense anyway), but then it kind of deliberately tried to piss off all the physics nerds by inserting all this great psychic/telepathy stuff into the narrative. "Screw realistic FTL travel, let's just stick this alien in a tank, feed it hallucinogenic drugs, and it can bend us through space and time." Also loved the idea of the Mentats - "we don't trust AI so we will train humans to be computers instead."

It is a) one of the few canonical SF novels that really stands up, b) seems to pave the way for New Wave in the 1960's and simultaneously make a break with SF as it was in the 40's and 50's (although admittedly this is pure speculation on my part as it was many decades before my birth - contemporary fans and writers may have felt differently).

The rest of the series seemed like a dud to me though - I've read several of the sequels multiple times and really I can't remember anything much about them, except the impression that Frank Herbert really didn't want to write them (maybe that is wishful thinking).

― ears are wounds, Wednesday, February 11, 2009 10:29 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark

i've read them many many times.

i understand the series up to the fourth book.

my comprehension gets rather fuzzy at the fifth.

i've been rereading the sixth in bits and pieces to try to get it.

TOTALLY CLASSIC.

― vahid (vahid), Wednesday, January 7, 2004 5:03 PM (7 years ago) Bookmark